From BBC, we get to learn that Ubuntu and Intel are working together to get to the point were Ubuntu-powered mobile devices such as cellphones and PDAs. They talk about the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project which hopes to have its first release in October 2007.

Pervasive Ubuntu – oh yeah!

It’s really cool to see Intel pushing the envelope with Open Source friendliness. Maybe AMD needs to catch up and brush up the ATI drivers – open source them and have a fighting chance in the newly growing desktop Linux market.

By the way, I came to know of the BBC article via Ercan, a reader, who adds:

I enjoy your ubuntu blog. I like the general updates on ubuntu but don’t forget the tips and tricks.

Tips, hmm, yes… it is hard to come by good ones everyday – and it becomes harder as Ubuntu gets better. I will work harder or it, Ercan.🙂

“The market is ready,” Silber said. “We think the combination of the timing, the technology and the partner are aligned to make it happen.”

There is a video interview with Mark Shuttleworth over at the Direct2Dell blog in which he talks about how the deal came about, and how this will make wide Linux adoption a much easier goal to achieve. He’s right when he says that this will increase Linux’s visibility across the board, and draw out closet Linux technologists who will now see some commercial benefit to advertising the Linux expertise they had, but never really talked about before.

I think this is a big step forward – hell, I look forward to answering, “what’s that Ubuntu-thing on your laptop?” with “Haven’t you heard, it comes pre-installed on some Dell PCs?”

Kudos to Dell for following up on their promise to listen to customers. My voted counted, for once. Depending on how many Ubuntu laptops get sold, Dell might just be the trailblazer in making and selling computers – once again. The interesting thing is, I wonder if Dell sees the future, can the others be far behind. Also, going by the example Mark states in the interview about how Linux adoption on servers led to hardware manufacturers ensuring that their stuff was up to snuff on servers, this can only mean better support for Ubuntu from the hardware component and peripheral manufacturers.

The Ubuntu Open Week is a week of sessions on the IRC chat channel #ubuntu-classroom where you can learn more about Ubuntu. You have sessions about getting involved with translating, patching, packaging, bug fixing, getting involved with communities, the desktop team and much, much more. The open week runs from Monday 23rd April through Saturday, 28th April.

Thank you, Ubuntu developers, MOTUs, Documenters, Bug Fixers, Forum members, IRC chatters, and Ubuntu users. Let us not take predictable, regular, ultra-cool releases for granted. My heart is so big right now, it might just explode. Thank you for this release, and for the release from the mundane, the bloated, the untrustworthy, and the unstable!

Mark talks candidly about Ubuntu. Turn to page 4 for where Mark describes who Linux is good for, and what makes him think Linux is not ready for commercial pre-installed computer sales. Sensible, rational, and very lucid.

– The Compiz-Extra division (what we think of as Compiz) will merge with the
Beryl project to form a new community with the temporary name of “Composite
Community”.

– The codebase of the new community will consist of the best plugins,
decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz
communities. We will create a code review panel consisting of the best
developers from each community who will see that any code included in a
release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution
in an officially supported package. Support for existing packages will be
continued at least until the first stable release of the new project.

Ian’s latest blog entry had this screenshot. You can spy Ubuntu’s logo in the top left. Ian confirms that this is indeed an Ubuntu desktop in the comments. I was glad to see it, and thought I’d share it with you.

ESR (wikipedia), that prototypical open-source geek, the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, to whom Linux and Open Source owes so much, has moved from Fedora/Red Hat to Ubuntu!

He announced his decision in an email to the Fedora Devel mailing list. Among other things, he notes about how the Linspire deal is actually good, and how it was easier to install Ubuntu Edgy from one cd, not five.

In less than three hours’ work I was able to recreate the key features of my day-to-day toolkit. The
after-installation mass upgrade to current packages, always a frightening prospect under Fedora, went off without a hitch. I’m not expecting Ubuntu to be perfect, but I am now certain it will be enough better to compensate me for the fact that I need to learn
a new set of administration tools.